George Packer’s The Unwinding won the 2013 National Book Award for non-fiction. He deserves it. Packer uses a format similar to the one John Dos Passos used in his U.S.A. trilogy by alternating stories to trace the decline of the U.S. economy and culture from 1978 to 2012. Tammy Thomas, auto parts worker, finds her middle-class job destroyed as General Motors and Delphi head into bankruptcy. Jeff Connaughton, a Washington lawyer, sees the political process become more dysfunctional. Dean Price, an entrepreneur in a tobacco state, finds his businesses ruined by the real estate and banking crisis. Peter Thiel, a billionaire, sees the U.S. sinking fast. I usually finish reading a book in a day or two. The Unwinding took me a week to read. I had to take “breaks” to stem the depression this book causes. Our country is in deep decline and The Unwinding shows how it happened. GRADE: A